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EPF 2014 – SHORTLIST

The series “Sit Silently” examines the signs of time in the rites of subcultures surrounding the capital of Latvia, Riga. It captures the places where “modern Europe” meets the elements of the Soviet times, which conflict and overlap at the same time, while appearing creatively in interiors, exteriors, portraits and still-lives depicting the everyday and the leisurely pastimes. The pictures also capture author’s searches for a slower time zone with more vivid and more open expressions, as well as the sense of home and specific creativity of daily routines beyond the downtown.
The series is also an author’s journey of recreation – escaping from the “focus” and looking for her own (Latvian) identity or core, admiring peripheral moments with their own significance, values and feeling. If, for example, one looks from the East, Kengarags is periphery of Riga, Latgale is the periphery of Latvia, and Latvia is the periphery of Europe.
The series’ title is an abbreviation of a piece from “Google Poetics” and consists of phrases that are popularly searched on the internet and are associated with sitting: “Sit silently /sit silently doing nothing / we sit silently and watch the world / we sit silently and watch.”
This reminds of a passage from Franz Kafka: “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

Bio

My name is Katrina Kepule and I am a photographer based in Latvia. Photography for me is an important way to relate to the world and translate my angle of view to others. My chosen field is documentary photography through which I can communicate narratives often understandable on an intuitive level.
I have completed several photography courses such as Professional Photography Course, Vocational School N38, Riga, Latvia (2000), B.A. Audio and Visual Culture and Theory, Latvian Academy of Culture, Riga, Latvia (2008), and International Summer School of Photography (ISSP) Ludza, Latvia (2009). I curently graduated from a two-year informal education program for emerging photographers, run by International Summer School of Photography (ISSP), Riga, Latvia (2014).
I have participated in a masterclass by Jan Grarup :Essence of photojournalism ( 2013) and an Artist’s Book making workshop by Nico Baumgarten (2014).
I have worked as a photo reporter at Chancellery of the Latvian Parliament.

This is the work of my 11 students this month in Rio de Janeiro. You are seeing 11 different stories or essays all shot in 4-5 days of real time. Each student comes up with their own idea or theme. These themes can be journalistic or abstract and subjective. The whole point is to get photographers started into seeing photographs woven together as essays. All of them are beginnings of thinking. Something that can be taken further later on.

Some are exercises in thinking and some are projects ready to be taken further. My job is to inspire, to coach, and to help mostly to have those I mentor to start thinking in a non linear way.

In this particular workshop we had a very unusual situation where I was also shooting my own essay, BeachGames. This added an additional spark as we were all putting pictures up on the classroom wall each day. Needless to say, we bonded in a very special way. We had some great times together all around..A time never to be forgotten.

We put this show together for a live audience in Rio in just a few hours from the time the last picture was taken. Enjoy.

I started this grant on my old Road Trips blog back in 2007 with my own money. Since then generous anonymous donors to Burn through the Magnum Foundation have kept the EPF alive and flourishing.

Please take a close look at your own work. Think body of work and/or narrative. Your work may be of either journalistic or artistic imperative. We are simply looking for serious work of any type where funding would help in the completion of this work. Authorship is the key.

Call for submissions

The Emerging Photographer Fund 2015 is now open for submissions!

The deadline for entry is May 1st, 2015 (6pm PST)

The winner will receive $10,000 and other awards will be announced soon.

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EPF 2014 – SHORTLIST

“The Ganges is a prime example of the unresolved contradiction between man and the environment. The Ganges is a river intimately connected with every aspect of Indian life. It is a source of water, energy and livelihood for millions of people who live along the banks of this river, thanks to the fertile lands flushing, provides food to more than one-third of the Indian population. Its ecosystem also includes one of the most numerous and varied animal and plant species. Despite what today is one of the most polluted rivers in the world because of toxic waste every day flock to the factories in its waters, damaging human health and the environment that surrounds him convulsing.”
What will happen tomorrow? Is the Ganges destined to die under the blows of humanity or can we believe that anything will change?

The last Chapters of the project will be:

1) Bangladesh: life along the Ganges as the construction of new dams along the river continues to upset the balance of the lives of people who live along the waters.

2) The Ganges Delta and Sundarbans: documenting the consequences of the rising of sea level and the simultaneous drying of the waters of the river itself.

3) Solutions: the World Bank has just set up a fund to be used for the “cleaning” of the river Ganges. I will show what has been done and what is being done to save the river and the solutions to the problem of pollution of this sacred river.

Bio

Giulio Di Sturco (b.1979 Italy) studied at the European Institute of Design and Visual Arts in Rome. In 2007 he moved to India where his spent the next five years refining his visual vocabulary, working in close collaboration with Greenpeace, MSF, WHO and Action Aid throughout much of Asia and Africa. In 2009 Giulio joined the VII Mentor Program. His awards include a World Press Photo first prize, as well as first prizes in the Sony Photography Awards, and the British Journal of Photography International Photography Awards among others. Giulio is currently represented by Getty Reportage and is a regular contributor to The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Sunday Times Magazine, Geo and Financial Times among other publications. He based in Bangkok and continues to work throughout Europe, Africa and Asia. Much of his personal work focuses on human adversity in climates of environmental and technological evolution.

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EPF 2014 – SHORTLIST

When I grew up I despised my village. I felt trapped by the dull normality, the narrow-minded people and the lack of amusements. I was depressed, bored and anxious to get out. Several years have passed and I’m now living in one of the largest cities in the world. Despite satisfying my adolescent desire to escape, I feel a longing to return to the place I so badly wanted to leave behind. When I’m far away and distanced from my past, I can value what I’m no longer part of. I return, and I see what before was hidden in the dark shadows of my youth. I admire the beauty of the landscape, the calm, the romantic light and the endless bright summer nights. But there are two sides of my present experience. The sound of the river’s flowing stream or the birds singing will never drown out the endlessly thoughts spinning in my head. I am still lost. I walk my old paths as I’m searching for answers for the scars in a childhood that formed who I am today. I photograph my brother growing up and my father who never will. I photograph the people that still live here and the animals I’ve always felt more close to. I use photography to help understand my surroundings and myself. “Left Behind” is a story about Sweden from my perspective today.

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Bio

Isabella Stahl was born in northern Sweden in 1984 and now lives and works in New York City. She studied at one of Sweden’s most prestigious schools for photography at the island “Gotland,” and moved to New York in 2012 to continue her studies at the International Center of Photography. She graduated in 2013 and is now working on her own long-term photographic art projects. She has received the Helge Ax:son Johnson grant two years in a row, 2012 and 2013, and exhibited at galleries such as Visby Art Museum, Photoville and Greenpoint Gallery. She is represented by Kasher|Potamkin Gallery in Chelsea, New York.

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EPF 2014 – SHORTLIST

Whether anyone is watching or not, migration is a lingering leap into the void. Collision of social with personal, empathy with intellection, this experience is often not misunderstood, it is rather unrecognized – as languages we’ve vaguely heard at some point in our lives, or weather and distances expressed in unaccustomed units of measure that can be assimilated, yet only half-rhymed.
Defining a photographic project in a few concise words is as difficult of a task as editing the project and shaping it into something of meaning and consequence. It is nonetheless important at some point to give the project some form to help shape its further direction and needs.
Primary intent of this project, titled Cargo, is to explore the theme of migration, its social, psychological, and immemorial nature from the standpoint of personal experience of being an immigrant, which is often comprised of the eluded synthesis of immemorial and recollected, that goes beyond describing community of immigrants, or enumerating its picturesque or depressing features and analyzing for which reasons community or people that moved there from one place are comfortable. It is, instead, a visual portrait of a community of memory and image.
The project is constructed in the form of short, often fragmented stories mapping the experience and exploring its various themes: language and culture and their adaptation, interaction of history and fiction, generational relationships, poetics of space, desire to find some lost incarnation of what was once familiar, and more.
Cargo’s stories and characters are based in communities of immigrants from Russia and former Soviet Union, which represent the author’s background. The stories, however, are not limited or intended to represent only one single community experience. It seeks to paint a broader picture of the immigrant common experiences.
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Bio

Born in St. Petersburg (Leningrad). Igor moved to California in the early 90s. He studied biology at the University of California Los Angeles, where he first started to take pictures and experiment in the darkroom.
Initial infatuation with picture taking led Igor to explore the silent and haunting experience of photographing the streets and shelter-hotels of Skid Row area in Los Angeles and brothels in Tijuana. The first series of images “No Such Records” savors the strange solitude of the enigmatic region between California and Mexico; amid the streets, bars, night shelter hotels, and disappearing night figures.
After 14 years, Igor returned to St. Petersburg in 2006, taking up photography full time, which led to a book project “Second Thoughts”.
At present, Igor is based in New York and working on a long term project exploring migration and gradual disappearance of neighborhoods based on Russian immigrant community in North America.
He joined Prospekt agency in 2011.

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EPF 2014 – SHORTLIST

“Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.”
– Gloria Naylor

They say that friends are the family you choose, and I believe this to be true. I have been lucky, having shared with my little family of friends ten summers running. A few years back, one of my fondest friends started an inside joke that has perpetuated itself every year. Funke – while extremely intoxicated – declared at the top of his lungs that this would be “the summer of our lives”. We laughed, but held the sentiment close to our hearts. We pinned our hopes on having unforgettable summers together, each better than the last.

And so the record spins. Every year we sing the same chorus: “This is going to be the summer of our lives.” We did our best to live it up, having taken vacations and experienced new places together, much of which I have had the good fortune to document on film. But it seems that things have now begun to change. Against our better judgement, we are becoming full blown adults. We’ve paired off, jobs turned into careers, we grew up. Alas, maturity rears its ugly head!

House parties have gradually transitioned into more meaningful events. In the last year, we’ve attended two weddings, one of which was my own. And by the end of this summer, we’ll get piss drunk and bruised up twice more at going away parties for two of our closest companions, including Funke himself. The time has come, it seems, to say goodbye…

This essay is simply entitled “The Summer of Our Lives”. The photographs it contains are very personal images of my friends, my compatriots, my partners in crime… my family. It illustrates those trips and parties, our intimacies and attractions to one another. This is my farewell to the old times and my tribute to our finest attempts at the best summers ever.

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Bio

Raised in Los Angeles, California; Robert Larson began working as a small town newspaper photographer in 2007 while learning his craft and thinking about a future as a documentary photographer. In subsequent years, he traveled the world, volunteering abroad with non-profit organizations such as Mercy Ships, The Red Cross and J/P HRO. It wasn’t until after documenting the death of his grandfather in 2009, that he decided to focus on personal photographic essays and story telling – rather than single images. Robert is represented by Getty Images; his work has been featured in The New York Times, Photo District News, Los Angeles Times and Lenscratch.com.